Christine Hayes continues Yale's Introduction to the Old Testament (RLST 145) by finishing her survey of psalm genres, including praise, lament, blessing and cursing, before turning to the Song of Songs, an erotic poem she notes has been reinterpreted piously over the centuries. The bulk of the lecture covers the Persian-era Restoration, when Judean exiles returned under Cyrus to the province of Yehud. Hayes works through 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, examining how these books frame the renewal of the Mosaic covenant, Ezra's dissolution of marriages to foreign wives, and the broader social and religious reforms meant to consolidate a fragile community. She treats the books' calamities as cautionary tales, and closes by noting the eventual failure of the intermarriage ban. Recorded in Fall 2006 as part of the full Open Yale Courses lecture series.